WickedRide Bags $9.1 Million From Sequoia Capital And Accel Partners

WickedRide, an online bike rental startup has revealed that it has raised $9.1 million in a new funding round that was led by Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners. According to the RoC filing submitted by the company, Raghunandan G, co-founder of TaxiforSure, also participated in this round of funding.

The platform was started in 2014 by Vivekananda Hallekere, Varun Agni, and Arun G. Initially focussed on luxury bike rentals, WickedRide is now also into scooter rentals.

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Currently, Metrobikes offers around 65 to 100 bikes at 36 out of 42 metro stations across Bengaluru. It charges INR 5 per km and INR 0.5 per minute to riders, including fuel charges. The startup also allows users to rent bikes from weekly to yearly basis, depending on the needs of the customer. Apart from Bengaluru, the team is also present in Mysuru, Manipal, Ahmedabad, and Jaipur to name a few.

A couple of years ago, the company had launched the scooter and two-wheeler rental arm – Metro bikes. The team had even tied up with the San-Francisco based ride sharing platform – Uber. Metro Bikes lends bikes and scooters on rent to urban city consumers. There also is a monthly-subscription plan, that the consumer can use to pick a bike from a metro station and drop it there.

The startup had earlier raised over $745,000 in 2015 and had announced its plans to launch bike rental services in Chennai, Ahmedabad, and Indore. India being one of the biggest two-wheelers market, several big and small bike rentals players are in the market, which includes RentOnGo, Wheelstreet, Rapido, among others.

She started at Venture Dreams as an intern and later graduated as a writer. She is a start-up enthusiast and likes to cover stories on startup fundings and acquisitions. Feel free to contact her at [email protected]